Special Features

New Castlevania Tidbits

At today's Konami press event, Koji "IGA" Igarashi, the mastermind behind the last ten years of Castlevania, was kind enough to give us updates on his two current 'vania titles. Nothing earth-shattering was announced, but it's nice to get any updates at all on these two anticipated titles.

The biggest news is that Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, the new 3D PS2 adventure, will be getting a simultaneous release on the Xbox. Little if anything will be changed in this version, but it'll still be odd to see a Castlevania game on Microsoft's machine.

IGA also took the opportunity to show how Hector, the game's hero, can use helper demons, known as "Innocent Devils," to deal with enemies. It boils down to three different AI modes. The first is automatic, in which the devil will clobber enemies of its own volition. It may not be the most efficient use of their powers, but it frees you to control Hector's fighting. The second mode is support; in this the devil attacks everything you tell Hector to. Proper use of this mode can result in greatly extended combo attacks as Hector and his devil take turns attacking. Finally, self-defense mode puts the devil in a permanent blocking stance, made to soak up enemy abuse and keep the heat off Hector. All told, these AI modes sound like a pretty good idea.

Lastly, IGA revealed that Trevor Belmont, the star of 1990's Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, will make an appearance in Curse of Darkness. This makes a good deal of sense, given that the new game takes place only three years after the old. While IGA was tight-lipped about Trevor's role, he strongly hinted that he would come into conflict with the player's character, Hector.

The highly anticipated Nintendo DS adventure Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow also got a bit of discussion. The soul system of Aria of Sorrow has been refined into the new "tactical soul system," the main feature of which is multiple levels of each soul power. You can increase Soma's ability with each soul power by collecting more souls of the same type. It makes sense and is simple to do ... at least when there are no ultra-rare souls involved. Hopefully soul collection in this new game won't get too tedious.

The other update is minor but amusing: Instead of naming your savegame with a standard font, the game will let you draw whatever you want with the DS' touchscreen and stylus. I told you it was minor, but hey, it's cool. What will you draw for yours?